The incense factory has long been located on College Corner Pike well back from the road, but now the site includes a store up by the road where the public and potential vendors can see the full range of incense products they offer.
Included are a variety of displays a store owner could consider in selling Wild Berry incense as well as numerous holders and devices for burning incense sticks.
“It is surprising how many people come here to Oxford and just stop in wanting to see what we have,” co-owner Marc Biales said. “The idea here is to have all the displays out for people to see.”
Ground was broken for the new store at 5465 College Corner Pike in May of last year, but a series of construction delays slowed the planned opening. Biales and his business partner Roger Atkin are pleased with the final result.
For those long-time residents who remember the funny, thoughtful, sometimes disrespectful small ads in The Oxford Press every week, there is a monitor in the back of the room with a slideshow of them. There are also still copies of the book Biales published several years ago with the ads reproduced for anyone wanting to have one of their own.
At one time, Wild Berry had stores in Cincinnati and Louisville, but they were closed and the signs were put into storage two decades ago. They are well-weathered but have been put up on the walls of the new store, one opposite the door and one behind the counter.
The décor of the shop area is done in weathered wood from a barn torn down in Indiana for a comfortable, old-time feel and accented by wooden barrels around the room with displays of incense on them.
“The barrels are from Kentucky, Maker’s Mark barrels,” said Shane Curtis, the office manager. “They tied in nicely with the old wood.”
Memorabilia includes an apron worn many years ago in making incense and a shovel from the ground breaking, he said.
Opening of the new store represents another big step in the growth of what was once a small local business operated a block off of High Street. Then the High Street store was opened where it remains today, but the incense operation in the back room grew out of that space and was moved to the Westgate Shopping Center.
The current incense factory was opened with 20,000 square feet of space in 1996 and space was doubled with an addition in 2011. The new store brings total space to just over 70,000 square feet.
The new building contains not only the store but a large warehouse area where supplies and finished product can be stored. Also housed in the new building are the home delivery operation for shipping orders and a small darkroom for photographing products for the Wild Berry catalog which they produce on-site.
Biales said most of their business is in the United States but Wild Berry incense can also be purchased in Canada and Mexico and well as Australia and New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Guam, Costa Rica and many islands including St. Thomas and Singapore.
Among the incense burners available in the new store is one specifically designed for “back-flow cones” in which the smoke goes down like a waterfall rather than rising like normal smoke. Biales said they improved on the incense cones available for such burners.
“The original cones smell terrible. We were able to create a cone that smells good, actually quite good,” Biales said.
It’s innovations like that and attention to detail which make the Wild Berry incense the best in the world, Biales said, and that’s the reason vendors from all over the country, and even the world, show up in Oxford looking to sell their incense in shops all over the world.
The store is open but with limited hours currently. When they get into full operation, the store will be open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily and noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays.
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